Seagate Announces Device-Based Kinetic Open Storage Platform

Seagate has just announced their Kinetic Open Storage Platform technology. It involves a new class of storage devices, as well as development tools and libraries. By building this new ecosystem, the company aims to reduce the amount of middleware, traditionally required for such cloud storage services.

According to Seagate, the old data center architecture is based on the assumption on the physical attributes of a typical storage device like a hard disk drive (HDD). Therefore, the current information system that drives cloud storage services are too far removed from storage devices, often separated by many hardware and software layers that introduce potential performance bottlenecks.

With the Kinetic Open Storage Platform technology, Seagate has decided to address this issue from ground up, by building a new class of storage devices that are Ethernet-enabled. On top of that, a new software stack is introduced that will enable developers to build software services that can access these storage devices through Ethernet connectivity. With this new technology, Seagate aims to make data sharing between storage devices seamless. At the same time, data migration between devices will be made easier. Last of all, the platform enables robust data integrity checks to ensure minimal corruption during such operations.

On the grand scale of things, the new platform is touted to enable businesses to ramp up their storage needs aggressively by simply plugging in more Ethernet-aware storage devices. Due to the elimination of middleware, the Kinetic Open Storage Platform also delivers on cost savings, due to need for less equipment. This in turn leads to lower manpower requirements for system maintenance. At the same time, less power is needed to operate the equipment of the new cloud storage solution, as compared to a traditional setup. For more information on this new initiative from Seagate, please visit their site here.